Agatha had missed her last chance. Well, that wasn't quite right. She had seized it and her shot was bound to land at those speeds and distances as the air boomed around her agate, but she hadn't taken into account that fractured agate that seemed to move with a mind of its own.

  Still, she refused to give up.

  She recalled her agate faster than her teacher could react, but unfortunately, there wasn't another window of attack any longer as a wall closed on her.

  She was done for.

  There was literally no way to win this spar. Thirty students hadn't been enough, and one with a single agate wouldn't be different.

  Yet she refused to stand down.

  I'M HERE TO BE THE WORLD'S BEST LITHORIST! She motivated herself as the wall approached her. Perhaps she couldn't win, but she wanted to make a spectacle out of it. Show that she was capable of fulfilling her goals; if not for the other students, then just for herself. There weren't many options to avoid it though. She couldn't pelter it down like the rest of the students, even if the wall was showing cracks from the repeated attacks. Her little sapphire was fast, yes, but she doubted it carried enough force to shatter the wall in one go.

  Then she realized something.

  The wall's rotated. Whether it had been a mistake or a lifeline that the teacher offered her, the wall had been summoned horizontally instead of vertically. She didn't have enough time to dodge to the side, but just maybe…

  What happened next was something that she herself couldn't even describe.

  Agatha moved out of instinct. Her body just knew what to do, and it did without asking for permission. She summoned her little sapphire on top of her, she extended her arm upward, and somehow, the agate stood anchored in place.

  Just barely enough time to make a jump with the help of her newfound fulcrum. She wasn't athletic nor trained enough to do a handstand on the agate, but at least she could jump quite high thanks to it.

  Then her face twisted in pain as she realized her mistake.

  A perfect sphere wasn't the best object to latch onto.

  Pain shot in her hands, and while she managed to maintain her grip, her fingers screamed like crazy at the mistreatment. She could only put two fingers on the agate, and they protested at having to hold her whole weight.

  But regardless of her suffering, she had done it! She had dodged the wall!

  Now she only had to shoot back at the teacher with her…

  "Ah…" Agatha grunted in realization.

  Her fulcrum and her weapon were one and the same.

  She didn't have enough time to recall and resummon her agate as a second wall came to her and hit her with the strength and likeness of a blanket caught in a storm. It was one of the weirdest sensations ever. The wall was made out of agates, but it shifted like one would expect from a fabric. As Agatha struggled to get out from inside like a shalesnapper on a net, she realized that the teacher's agate slowly deformed. Before she could get a better look at it, the wall-fabric vanished. It was already jarring to have agates appear and disappear instantly, but when it was as big as that one, it was outright confusing. One couldn't help but be petrified for a short while.

  "Are you alright there?" It was Teacher Dago who spoke to her. He also extended a hand to Agatha as she stood next to her.

  "Y-yeah…" The girl responded still a bit shellshocked.

  "You knew about the Anchor command? It is not a very typical one, I must say," the soldier mused.

  "The what now?" Agatha frowned as she was pulled up by her teacher.

  Oh, whoa, she was surprised by the man's strength. She was well aware that he was a soldier, but he was also young and lithe, so she didn't expect him to pull her from the ground casually as if he were picking up a bucket. Perhaps even an empty one. Agatha attributed that exchange to her featherweight rather than the man's strength.

  "The command you just used now?" He answered with a frown of his own. Agatha failed to react. "The one you used to replicate my movements and latch onto your agate?"

  "Oh!" The dirty-blond student gasped in realization. "Nope, I did not know that command."

  The teacher's frown became very pronounced, and his grasp on her hand tightened. "Then how did you perform those acrobatics?"

  "Oh, well," she blushed, but her expression was quickly substituted by a grimace of pain. "Could you let go of my hand first? …Please?"

  "Oh, I apologize," René Dago freed her, and Agatha clutched her hand. It burned.

  Now that she was standing new to him, Agatha realized how massive the man was. Yes, he was lithe, but he stood almost a head and a half taller than her, even if he wasn't that much wider. And that was… intimidating, to say the least.

  "Uhm…" Her embarrassment was substituted by fright. "I cannot say that I was… conscious about my actions. Those last instants of the sparring… well, my body just moved on its own. It knew it had a chance if it replicated your movements, and I cannot exactly recall what was on my mind right then, but… well, uhm, your agate looked anchored in place, you know? So I think I thought that, well, maybe that was the answer?"

  If there were a perfect definition for a doubtful answer, Agatha's would have been printed in the national dictionary.

  "I see…" Her teacher mused as he scratched his short beard. "The same can happen with the fundamental commands, so I guess it will not be unexpected for it to happen with other commands. However it might be," his voice suddenly became sharp and no longer a murmur, "your demonstration of physical and lithorist capabilities has been outstanding, Miss Malachite."

  "Thank you…?" Truth be told, Agatha didn't know what to answer, and that was the best she could do.

  "Now join the rest of your classmates on the grades, I have something to announce."

  Agatha did as commanded and sat on the grades. She could have sat right next to her roommate, but she was a bit tired from the spar to climb those steps, and besides, there were a handful of open spots at the ground level. She ended up sitting next to the boy who held on the longest during the sparring and handled the teacher's flying agate.

  "Good work," he said taciturnly without turning his face.

  The congratulations surprised Agatha. The blond boy was obviously a noble with his chiseled face that didn't look at all like one from a fifteen-year-old boy, but from her personal experience and the warnings from her mother, nobles were a mess to get entangled with. Posh beings that only cared about themselves. Not that her mother's words could be trusted in that regard, as she doubted her mother had ever met a noble in her life. Though most villagers also said that. Yet then again, none of the villagers in Malachite were likely to have known a noble.

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  Anyhow, the congratulations still came as a shock.

  "Likewise," Agatha responded with the utmost politeness that she could muster, which was just a self-contained word. But that felt wrong to her. It came out as a devoid congratulation, while the boy whose name she didn't remember had been genuine. "I could not have gotten as close as I did without your support. You did great there, too."

  Yup, that's way better! She puffed her chest in satisfaction at having handled a minimally civilized and formal conversation.

  "Alright," René Dago clapped to get his students' attention. "As you might have checked, you are completely unable to confront a soldier in your current state. It must be said that I am far from your average soldier, but even then, thirty different sources of agates are quite the number. Now, could anyone tell me what you did wrong?"

  "That we had worse agates?" A male student said behind Agatha, though rather than a doubtful answer, it sounded more like a joke.

  "That is a given," the teacher responded as a matter of fact without showing any amusement. "Ignoring the quality, the jump in power between an agate at the First Stratum and one in the Second Stratum is not just a hundred percent increase, but more like a tenfold increase." That statement garnered some whispers amongst the students at the bleachers. "This is not tangible power, though. This increase in Stratum does not mean that your Speed command will get ten times faster, but rather it means a virtual power. You cannot underestimate the versatility of commands, and being able to wield two separate ones already brings out infinite possibilities. So yes, better agates are certainly a factor, but when you have such an overwhelming quantity at your disposal, quality is not the answer. Any other guesses?"

  Even though Agatha didn't turn her head to face the student who had given the original response, she was very sure the boy was now blushing out of his mind. She certainly would have.

  "Yes, Miss Rivera?" Teacher Dago said out of nowhere, so Agatha guessed someone must have raised their hand.

  "Strategy?" The female student answered with doubt. Everyone answered with doubt; that much was a given by now.

  "I would have preferred if you had developed your answer more, but indeed, that is the answer," the soldier nodded as he clasped his hands behind his body. "You all rushed toward me, and whilst that is indeed a strategy, it is not a solid one. Some of you might have noticed from the grades, but I had many opportunities to attack you from the back as the range of my agates is far bigger than yours. If I had done so, you would not have even gotten close to cracking my agates. The only ones who seemed to implement a modicum of strategy were Miss Malachite with her initial shot outside of my range and her final gambit, and Master Echevarria as he masterfully distracted my most powerful agate. If all of you had had a similar mentality, then I would have at least bothered to put some effort."

  Then I would have at least bothered to put some effort. The words spoken by the teacher echoed in Agatha's mind, and she believed it did so in the minds of her classmates. All of that grueling exchange had been… a diversion for their teacher. Not a real effort. And the worst part of all was that Agatha was inclined to believe him. The man was fresh, whilst most of the students were sweating and would have been panting too if they hadn't been allowed to rest on the grades.

  And that was considering his agates had cracked. The last time she had cracked her little sapphire, she was panting and nauseated for a whole day. Yet the soldier before them was pristine. Maybe he looked a bit rugged and sweaty, but who wasn't after a spar?

  "This is the part that I want to focus on in these classes: strategy and combat effort. Not just the quality of agates, that one I will go over during Agatecraft classes. But having said so, strategy is something we will see more closely starting next year. First, you need a handful of History classes under your belt to be somewhat competent," he clapped as soon as he finished that sentence. "Now, however, it is time for physical education class. Stand up."

  The students did as commanded. Agatha stood up by pushing her palms against the stone of the grades, which proved to be a bad idea as her hand started hurting again. Depths! Next time, I have to shape my agate before using the Anchor command.

  "There are two aspects to the soldier: their body and their agates. Now it may be more obvious to you why I handle the classes that I do. You are too young for military training, but not for training your body. So… ten laps around the field!"

  A cacophony of groans was unleashed from those words – Agatha being one of the members of that lazy chorus – but no student got vocal with their protests.

  Considering the length of the arena was thirty meters, and it was a rectangle, the whole perimeter ended up being one hundred meters. Hey, it seems the math I was forced to cram for the statal examination is useful! But Agatha soon realized that making ten laps around the field meant running a whole kilometer. Ugh…

  As far as girls were concerned, Agatha was quite athletic. Not only was she a village girl, which already meant she moved way more than the sedentary noble women, but she also had a lot of recent practice in what using her legs was related to.

  Endurance was the name of the game, and that was her most mastered field. Her short stature meant shorter strides, but her resistance was way higher than the boys after those grueling two initial weeks of nonstop walking. During the first couple of laps, she stood around the middle pack of the boys, but soon her endurance prevailed, and she found herself competing alongside the most athletic boys. Of course, she couldn't win those, but it wasn't a competition to begin with.

  Her fingers throbbed from time to time as she ran, but there wasn't much she could do there. She tried using the Chill command to soothe her pain, but then she remembered why she used her mother's agates to cool down wounds instead of her own as she had almost inflicted her fingers with frostbite.

  Agatha's agate was without a doubt the highest quality agate in the world – or so she liked to think – but that also meant it was very powerful. Too powerful for her to control reliably. Her little sapphire was way colder than winter itself when commanded by Chill, and she had no fabric at hand to mitigate its effects by covering it, so she had to be satisfied by making a small pipe with the Shape command that covered her fingers and applied pressure to them so she wouldn't do any wrong gestures.

  By the time she was done with the laps, her lungs hurt way more than her fingers. She ended up being third, which put her in the top ten percent of her class, beyond the obvious podium.

  "Quakes and faults, I am tired!" Agatha grunted as she slumped on the ground near the teacher once she was done. She couldn't even care if the man had heard him.

  "Language." Surprisingly, the male who called her out wasn't Teacher Dago, but the blond noble who had congratulated her after the spar.

  "Truth be told," she gasped for air before continuing, her chest sagging dramatically, "I could be way more explicit with my language."

  "That much is true," the boy snorted. He sat on the grades with his back arched forward, his noble composure completely sapped by the exhaustion.

  Running a kilometer wasn't that exhausting, but she and he were the ones who certainly had worn out the most during the sparring. And now they were carrying that exhaustion back with them.

  "You are fast," Agatha complimented him taciturnly as she still partially struggled for air.

  "Well, I have been training my stamina in preparation for lapiloquia classes. A shame that we will not be taught about them soon," he clicked his tongue. "In any case, your speed has more merit. As you are… well, a girl."

  Agatha panted, exhaled, and groaned all at the same time. That gesture meant to say: boys will be boys, regardless of their upbringing, which is to say: disgusting.

  "Wait, what do you mean training your stamina for lapiloquia?" She decided to prioritize the boy's first statement rather than the latter.

  "I do not much myself, but apparently, as lithorica taxes the mind, lapiloquia taxes the body."

  "Huh, neat." It was certainly important to have that piece of information. Whilst she wanted to be the world's best lithorist, Agatha was quite aware of her limitations, so maybe pivoting to the world's best lapiloquist wasn't a bad idea either. Like any healthy youngling, she craved fame and recognition. "You fancy there is a third discipline that taxes the soul instead of the mind or the body?"

  "That would be quite queer," he responded. But before he could elaborate, the rest of the class started arriving in mass, interrupting their conversation. As soon as more of his buddies sat around him, the blonde became meeker and stoic, borderline unapproachable.

  The whole class made it to the bleachers in the next minute. All except one student.

  "Miss Valasela, do I have to remind you that this is a military academy?" Teacher Dago said as the girl approached him.

  "No, sir!" The redhead responded between pants, copious amounts of sweat, and an overall haggard pace.

  And to everyone's surprise, she continued running.

  That hadn't been her last lap.

  Agatha heard more than one girl letting out a snort.

  The next lap didn't prove to be the last one either.

  Now the girls became far more vocal about their amusement. These were silver-spoon damsels – if not outright osmium-spoon ones – that probably hadn't dressed themselves once before arriving at the academy's dormitories, and that made their difference in speed even more comical to them. They were the epitome of laziness, and yet they had managed to outrun their redhead classmate by a lot.

  The next lap was the final one. But the pace Agatha's roommate showed was… nefarious at best. By the time she reached the goal, she was haggard, crestfallen, with a sagging chest, wet hair and skin, and dead eyes. Christie collapsed on her four limbs the moment she reached the teacher and then proceeded to free the contents of her stomach in a display of humiliating exhaustion.

  For more than a handful of students, that seemed to be the greatest comedy act that they had ever seen by the way they howled.

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